I would want to know a little detail about raycaster engines. If I make a basic low-poly 3D level in Blender, can I import it to a SFML made engine as a minimal drawn fps level? Aleph One handled 3D pretty well, which put me to question if it is a true 2.5D engine. Was A1 a raycaster?

I want to know this because I want to create an engine that can run greatly on the 3DS. If it doesn't work with raycasting then I'll try to get OpenGL to work.

If you didn't, yes I have signed up to be a Nintendo Developer. Has a 3DS test unit even.

I’ll echo what Pfhorrest said about the lack of responses. Sometimes it’s not actually personal when people don’t respond right away; I’ve got a lot of drags on my time right now and haven’t even gotten to a lot of Chronicles and Eternal stuff people are expecting.

Regarding the Raycaster engine, I’d never heard of the it so I can’t really be of any assistance regarding it; you’d probably get a better response from a forum dedicated to it. I’m sure there’s one out there. There are forums for everything. I suspect the lack of responses regarding that largely owes to people lacking specific knowledge (and also, the thread topic isn’t very descriptive – most people probably have no idea what “Raycaster Chattering” even means).

As for self-esteem, building it sucks and I don’t have any particular advice there, but I think it helps a lot to find something you’re good at and stick with it. Part of the possible issue is that you don’t seem to maintain attention on one project for very long, so you’ve got all this time you’ve poured into stuff with few tangible results. In order to gain skill at developing for any particular platform, you’ve gotta stick with it awhile. A lot of my early maps suuuuucked and very few of them made it into Chronicles; the ones that did are vastly different from their forms 22 years ago. The thing about “you have to pour 10,000 hours into something to master it” is an oversimplification, but there’s nonetheless some truth to it in that if you don’t stick with anything for very long, you won’t develop much skill at any of it.

Plus, by sticking with a project for long enough, you’ll keep the long list of unfinished projects you’ve started from bloating further. And that can be an issue. The Marathon community is littered with vapourware – unfinished projects that never materialised. I suspect most people are more inclined to put effort into something they think is going to result in a playable game someday. It seems like you get discouraged and abandon stuff pretty quickly, and I suspect many people on this board may think you’ll have lost interest in whatever you’re doing right now within a month’s time. Now there may be some justification in some of these – you might hit a dead-end and realise what you’re trying isn’t going to pan out. But it does seem like you abandon projects several times a year. Maybe if there were more finished games or even playable levels, you’d be getting more responses.

I’d try to avoid getting discouraged so easily. I know that’s difficult when you’re in the midst of some serious mental disorders. I’ve been there. It seems insurmountable at times. That’s your brain talking, though, and moreover, it’s your brain being addled by a rather nasty chemical imbalance that messes with your perceptions. It’s a matter of… mind over mind, in a way. You have to talk yourself out of an entire method of thinking.

There’s kind of a catch-22 there, because the best way I’ve found to talk yourself out of that kind of thinking is to have some tangible accomplishments to point to in order to remind yourself that the negative thoughts are bullshit. But the negative thoughts are the main obstacle in the way of tangible accomplishments. The most reassuring thing I can say is that it gets easier – at least, it has for me. I was severely depressed and caught in a spiral of self-loathing for some nine years at one point. I have off days now and then, but they’re comparatively rare, and I haven’t experienced the self-loathing in a long time.

Anyway, that’s my advice. Find something you’re good at and enjoy doing and keep working on it until you’re great at it. Once you’ve done that, it’ll be easier to overcome the crippling self-doubt.

“People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.” —V, V for Vendetta (Alan Moore)

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.” —Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”

“If others had not been foolish, we should be so.” —William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

You appear to be in a downward spiral that includes failing to meet your expectations and beating yourself up over it. This tells me you do not know how to take the necessary steps towards success. I advise you take time away from any project hobbies for a while. Don't even write down new ideas or linger on them. Don't think about existing ideas. You need time away. Take a few weeks to build a healthy life routine outside your mind. Learn to be comfortable with not chasing obsession. In a downward spiral the only way out is to stop the spinning.

After a few weeks of forming this new habit you can extend yourself back into your hobbies but most importantly you must retain a sense of vigilance against falling back into a downward spiral. During these few weeks you should uphold a healthy diet and exercise. Learn to be happy. If you're not happy then you are doing it wrong.

RadBurn may be onto something. If a part of your life is making you miserable, it’s probably best to re-evaluate that part of your life and cut it out until you’re capable of handling it again. Einstein didn’t actually say the definition of insanity is repeating the same thing and expecting different results (it was probably actually one of the Alcoholics Anonymous people), but it’s still pretty accurate regardless of the source.

(I have to issue a caveat to that quote, though: the creative process does look an awful lot lot like repeating the same thing and expecting different results. It’s actually repeating a similar thing, though, because there’s a process of skill being acquired along the way. If you played “Flight of the Bumblebee” the same way every time you attempted it, no one would ever be able to learn it. But people improve by practising the same musical piece over and over again. Practising a particular skill set is a very different beast from repeating the same actions in one’s day-to-day life, though – and in any case, anyone who tried to start learning piano with “Flight of the Bumblebee” probably would be insane.)

I’m also going to point to the Le Guin quote in my signature. There’s a part of our culture that romanticises suffering and treats it as a necessary part of the artistic process, and it’s total bullshit. To be clear, I think it may actually be necessary to have have experienced some degree of suffering in order to possess the empathy required to be a decent human being. But suffering is not, in and of itself, a good thing, and it certainly does not aid the process of artistic creation. I’ve created by far better artistic work when I’ve been in a good mental place than I did when I was depressed, and I’ve created by far more artistic work from a good mental place as well. When I was depressed, I was frequently too depressed to create any artistic works at all.

At any rate, just because a goal is unattainable in your current mental state doesn’t mean it’ll be that way forever. It pays to be realistic about these things. Don’t try to take on more than you’re capable of right now, and don’t beat yourself up for not being capable of more. It is what it is. You’re not going to get out of a depression by consistently beating yourself up over your limitations. We all have them.

“People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.” —V, V for Vendetta (Alan Moore)

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.” —Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”

“If others had not been foolish, we should be so.” —William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Seconding RADIX. That latter post is... beyond my ability to comprehend, and it leaves me at a loss for words. And this is me we're talking about. I don't believe there are any professional therapists here, and even if there were, I doubt the internet is an adequate medium for addressing your issues. If you're not in therapy, find some way to start. If you are... go more? Put more mental energy into it? Something. You've seemingly got issues that I'm afraid no message board post will be adequate to address.

“People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.” —V, V for Vendetta (Alan Moore)

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.” —Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”

“If others had not been foolish, we should be so.” —William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

patrick wrote:there are few things as fatuous and in bad faith as these online no-strings, no value displays of generic sympathy / life advice for strangers

Wow...

Metaphor time: Joe Shmoe is having a hard time with life. He goes to the bar and starts talking to Bob Somebody who is a stranger willing to lend an ear. Bob gives him some advice from personal experience. Bob has no obligation to help him but he tries. Ya know, cuz it a fucking human thing to want to help others. Maybe Joe will take the advice or maybe he won't. Bob can relate in some way and tailors his advice appropriately the best he can.

Ted the bartender sees these kinds of interactions often enough that he has become distant from the lives of others unless it means better tips and charming customers to keep coming back emptying their wallets. It's not that Ted has become cold but instead has learned to compartmentalize his life.

The whole rest of the bar could care less about Joe or Bob sitting at the bar. They're all there to drink and have a good time. They all enjoy the brief escape from the struggles of life.

Joe might have issues that Bob doesn't fully know about. But Joe is another human being and listening and talking is pretty fucking important to the core of being human.

Maybe Joe has it bad enough that he should get medical treatment. Maybe Bob is a fool for trying. After all, they're just two strangers sitting next to each other at a bar.

I have limited experience ray casting, and the only time I've done it, it was a little buggy. In a game of POWERS, the ray I was using went right through a closed door. I don't think that was supposed to happen.